MOSCOW — Violence in Ukraine escalated sharply Tuesday, as artillery shells and airstrikes pierced the relative calm of a 10-day cease-fire hours after President Petro Poroshenko allowed it to expire.
Both sides appeared to be readying for a protracted battle after days in which the fighting diminished but did not disappear. It remained unclear whether the Ukrainian military, which has battled pro-Russian separatists since mid-April, would be able strike a decisive blow against the rebels, who have seized territory in eastern Ukraine.
“The active phase of the counterterrorism operation resumed this morning,” parliament chairman Oleksandr Turchynov told legislators. “Our armed forces are hitting the bases and outposts of terrorists.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the violence, indicating that the period of relative conciliation from the Kremlin that started after Poroshenko’s May 25 election was at an end and that the Ukrainian leader now bore responsibility for the military operations, which started before he took office.
“Unfortunately, President Poroshenko has resolved to resume military action,” Putin said at a Moscow meeting of Russia’s ambassadors. “We failed to convince him that the road to a secure, stable and inviolable peace cannot lie through war.”
Poroshenko had two long telephone conversations with Putin and the leaders of France and Germany in recent days to find a durable peace, but he had come under increasingly heavy attack at home for the cease-fire, which never quelled the violence entirely. At least 27 soldiers died during the truce, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said, and many critics in Kiev said the pause in hostilities was simply giving separatists a chance to regroup.
Security forces and rebels skirmished across a wide swath of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday.
